Retired American general H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991, died Thursday. He was 78.
Schwarzkopf died in Tampa, Fla., where he had lived in retirement, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to release the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A much-decorated combat soldier in Vietnam, Schwarzkopf was known popularly as “Stormin’ Norman” for a notoriously explosive temper.
He served in his last military assignment in Tampa as commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, the headquarters responsible for U.S. military and security concerns in nearly 20 countries from the eastern Mediterranean and Africa to Pakistan.
Schwarzkopf became “CINC-Centcom” in 1988, and when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait three years later to punish it for allegedly stealing Iraqi oil reserves, he commanded Operation Desert Storm, the coalition of some 30 countries organized by then-president George H.W. Bush that succeeded in driving the Iraqis out.
The guy had color, I give him that. At the end of the day the strategy of force marshaling under operation desert shield and the instant transition when he had a massive armor and air advantage to desert storm was brilliant, especially when he was under pressure to liberate Kuwait far before he did.
He completely re-invented American armored warfare by stealing elements of Soviet and German doctrine and was a major cog in reforming the United States Army.
He had the best briefings. I remember once he showed an aircraft bombsite video of a bridge that was getting bombed out and a Iraqi truck was speeding ahead of the bomb blasts and collapsing bridges and he simply stated "Ladies and Gentlemen I'd like to introduce you to the luckiest son of a b%%tch on the planet"
He was the General that America needed at the time.
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God rest your soul General, may you rest in peace. With George H. W. Bush in ICU and not looking good this may be a rough week for us down here.
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I'm curious to hear opinions from other members about whether Schwarzkopf showed real genius or mainly just played it safe with massive force advantage. The later invasion of Iraq with more modest forces struck me as being far more audacious.
The way Desert Storm portrayed war as video game / comedy show always disturbed me.
it was the first war that a country with a HUGE military was absolutely destroyed by technology with a minimum loss of allied lives
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I'm curious to hear opinions from other members about whether Schwarzkopf showed real genius or mainly just played it safe with massive force advantage. The later invasion of Iraq with more modest forces struck me as being far more audacious.
I remember a friend of mine calling me just before the Allies attacked, wringing his hands about the potential for huge loss of life by the Allies after they tried to storm into Iraq in a full frontal assault.
I said they'd have absolute air superiority and, in any event, the frontier was too long to defend and the Allies would simply do an end around with superior, mobile armoured forces where the defences petered out and charge straight at Baghdad.
You'll remember the Allies spent about six weeks blowing things up in Iraq with airpower before they even crossed the frontier and yes, they did the end-around.
It's not like I'm a military genius . . . . it was blatantly obvious what was going to happen.
Schwarzkopf had everything in his favour and did the obvious instead of something egotistical, saving countless Allied lives in the process. Does that make him a genius? Well, he played it smart is all I'm saying.
The Iraqi's had no chance of defending that front against the force arrayed against them.
Cowperson
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I'm curious to hear opinions from other members about whether Schwarzkopf showed real genius or mainly just played it safe with massive force advantage. The later invasion of Iraq with more modest forces struck me as being far more audacious.
I think he had a brilliant strategy. He faced a huge army with fairly advanced equipment including the Russian made T-72 which was considered to be a fairly advanced main battle tank back them.
He marshaled his forces and showed a lot of patience and used overwhelming air power to bomb Iraq's logistical and defense facilities. He dropped bridges and isolated the vaunted Republican guard.
He then used overwhelming armor that often out rushed his accompanying infantry units. He took advantage of the fact that the Iraqi army was pretty much a road army, so he could use sweeping attacks to flank and destroy.
One of the most important things is that his younger officers took up his hell bent for leather strategy.
This was the first time that any army faced a combined arms attack like this since the German Blitzkrieg, where air power, mobile artillery, stand off artillary, armor, and infantry was all bought to bear on single targets.
He basically destroyed the Iraqi army in under 100 hours, that goes beyond a technology or numbers advantage, also if I remember right the Iraqi army in the field was not small.
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He basically destroyed the Iraqi army in under 100 hours, that goes beyond a technology or numbers advantage, also if I remember right the Iraqi army in the field was not small.
In modern war, he who controls the sky controls the war. It was the air campaign that was mostly responsible for the overall victory, and that was General Chuck Horner. Without General Chuck Horners air campaign, Schwarzkopf wouldn't of had the freedom to move his ground forces at will, like he did. A large amount of the Iraqi Military was destroyed by Coalition aircraft well before Schwarzkopf rolled in with the armor. In fact, when General Chuck Horner was pummeling the Iraqi forces from the air, Schwarzkopf was still in the United States, and hadn't left for Iraq yet.
In modern war, he who controls the sky controls the war. It was the air campaign that was mostly responsible for the overall victory, and that was General Chuck Horner. Without General Chuck Horners air campaign, Schwarzkopf wouldn't of had the freedom to move his ground forces at will, like he did. A large amount of the Iraqi Military was destroyed by Coalition aircraft well before Schwarzkopf rolled in with the armor. In fact, when General Chuck Horner was pummeling the Iraqi forces from the air, Schwarzkopf was still in the United States, and hadn't left for Iraq yet.
I don't disagree, but an airforce can't effectively do what an army does which is take territory.
As I stated the Air war created confusion and destroyed key logistics and transportation, but the boldness of the armored slashes won the day, and was considered to be incredibly bold when going against the Iraqi army
Operation Desert Sabre was a brilliant operation that smashed, basically 2 brigades of American troops supporting the 2 squadrons of Armored cav smashed 2 Iraqi tank heavy armored brigades in the battle of 73 Hastings.
The American's were outnumbered by Iraqi armor and still smashed them thanks in part to the aggressiveness of Stormin Norman.
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A clear illustration of the problem with a road bound army.
The Gulf war was really the first war where GPS systems were used so effectively.
recalculating.....
turn left on "you're f'ed Highway"
recalculating....
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Thank you for everything CP. Good memories and thankful for everything that has been done to help me out. I will no longer take part on these boards. Take care, Go Flames Go.
The American's had GPS the Iraqi's didn't they stuck to the roads in Kuwait and in their retreat, the American's drove through the desert and flanked them.
Its hard to believe that a addon to a tank no more advanced then the GPS in your car changed the course of warfare.
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I remember reading that the loss of life on both sides was something like 1500 people? Basically a giant propaganda win for both as each leader could go back to the people and say either "we liberated free and democratic Kuwait" or "we held the invaders at the border".
If that's great strategy by Stormin' Norman, great. I can't be particularly impressed because most of us have used a similar strategy in risk when we build up an enormous army advantage and hammer the other guy with that obvious superiority, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
I remember reading that the loss of life on both sides was something like 1500 people? Basically a giant propaganda win for both as each leader could go back to the people and say either "we liberated free and democratic Kuwait" or "we held the invaders at the border".
If that's great strategy by Stormin' Norman, great. I can't be particularly impressed because most of us have used a similar strategy in risk when we build up an enormous army advantage and hammer the other guy with that obvious superiority, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
I don't know where you got your numbers from Slava
Iraq lost between 10 and 12,000 casualties in the air war and up to 12000 during the ground campaign on top of that Iraq suffered 75,000 wounded.
The Americans lost 148 in total and 35 of those were friendly fire incidents.
In total there were 347 coalition deaths.
The Coalition had 150,000 troops and 1500 tanks on the ground, The Iraqi army was estimated as a million man army half of which were involved in Kuwait. Iraq started the war with 4230 tanks and lost 4000 of them in the war.
By the end of the war out of Iraq's 44 army and armor divisions only 2 were left somewhat combat efficient the rest had been savaged.
Your information is wrong.
This was a crushing victory by Norman.
Two factors. while the Iraqi's had a huge number of T-72 tanks which were considered to be a main generation tank, the M1 was just a generational jump in tank technology. The Russian's pretty much pooped bricks when they saw the M1's savage them. To this day through multiple wars, while 80 M1 and M1A1 tanks have been disabled in war, very few have been destroyed.
As mentioned above the GPS was a huge advantage and allowed the American's to slash Iraqi formations from unexpected directions and better flank and destroy them.
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Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 12-29-2012 at 11:01 AM.
RIP - General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
